PS/2 port myth ?

Hello,

I've heard that you can fry your PS/2 port if you change (unplug then plug again) mouse or keyboard while the PC is powered on. is that true ?

TIA
Spunkiiez.

I have seen mobo's that lost their PS/2 keyboard port due to unplugging/plugging in while the machine had power to it. I have also seen mobo's that did not get damaged while unplugging the devices from the PS/2 ports. Generally speaking, shut the machine down first.

I used to work at a PC repair and custom build shop, and one of my co-workers was always going on about how you will fry the motherboard if you hot plug PS/2 devices.

However, in my 4-5 years there I build and repaired thousands of systems and hot plugged too many PS/2 devices to count and never witnessed ANY problems. And, neither did any of the other technicians.

Perhaps we were just lucky, or perhaps it's not actually that much of a risk.

So, I guess if you're willing to take the risk, fine (I do). If not, get a KVM switch if you need to share PS/2 peripherals and/or monitors. KVMs are a lot slicker anyways.

I've seen it! Not often though.

A bunch of PC-Chips boards had keyboard ports that didn't grab the pins tightly enough, so they'd get frequent "hot plugs" from making intermittent contact. They all failed eventually, usually after several months. Which equates to hundreds of hot connect/disconnects.

Oh, there's a way to hot-swap PS/2 keyboards...

Put the system into standby so it won't detect the keyboard being unplugged, switch them, and bring it out of standby.

I hot-swap floppy drives too!

Not entirely true...I unplug my mouse/keyboard while its on, it still works if I plug it back in rightaway, however if you unplug it before BIOS detects it, then it will be unusuable and you would have to Re-Post. In the OS, it doesn't matter.

I don't know... only thing that happens when I replug mine in, is that I get a button delay, like the settings are reset to default, but all I have to do is go to control panel, turn down the speed and turn it back up.

I guess I must be lucky enough to not fry my system cuz sometimes I unplug my devices while its on. Thanks for the correction, Im going to be careful next time.